A new twist on the use of ALIBATA

Boni Comandante Jr, Ph.D.

http://www.baybayin360.org/

The use of ALIBATA in reference to the Baybayin Script has found a new twist. This should
redeem Paul Versoza (1914) from his lapses1.
We start with what can be found in one of the early dictionaries printed in Pinamahayan, Pila
(now Victoria) Laguna.

The Tagala language was referred to as Baybayin as differentiated to the Spanish orthography
or Castillian a. b. c. It starts with the letter A and compares it with Hebrew, Greek and Arabic.
A quick comparison of the name-word meanings gives us some revealing insights:

While aleph connotes the animal ox (rightfully the call of an ox), Baybayin script aa means a
call (buffalo call sound). Beth-bb gets even closer. A native Visayan would understand the
meaning of bb as the mouth while Tagalogs would say its the chin. We clearly see that aa
baba is just the equivalent of aleph beth.

Comandante 2011

1 http://www.baybayin.com/paul-r-verzosas-pangbansang-titik-nang-pilipinas-how-baybayin-wasnamed-alibata/